The Australian media focuses disproportionately on Israel and particularly on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The bias in this coverage derives partly from trends imported from international sources, especially certain “narrative frames.” However, there are domestic influences within the Australian media, especially among the public broadcasters and some of the newspapers, that exacerbate the problem.

Beyond bias, certain themes emerging in the Australian media are examples of the “new anti-Semitism.” These include the alleged financial and media power of the Jewish lobby; an extreme demonization of Israel and extravagant assertions about the supposed worldwide effects of its policy toward the Palestinians; conspiracy theories about American Jewish neoconservatives; and a tendency to claim that anti-Semitism is a response to Jewish behavior and attitudes.

Influences on the Australian Media

The Australian media gets much of its news about the Middle East, both print and electronic, from international services such as AP, Reuters, AFP, the BBC, and CNN. It therefore absorbs many of the biases and problems associated with these outlets around the world.

In particular, these sources bring into Australia what the Project for Excellence in Journalism1 has called “narrative frames” – overall storylines about the Middle East that shape coverage. They influence what stories are seen as news, the perspective from which they are conveyed, language use, and the background the reporter presents. David Bernstein has identified three such frames that are key to understanding most media treatment of the Middle East, both in Australia and elsewhere:2

Narrative Frame #1: The Cycle of Violence

The “cycle of violence” frame holds that violence only begets violence, in a vicious circle of bloodshed. According to this paradigm, in the words of the Jerusalem Post’s [Bret] Stephens, “ordinary distinctions between aggressors and victims, and between random terrorist acts and targeted military reprisal, are submerged in the catch-all word ‘violence,’ as if violence belongs to the same category as the weather….”

Narrative Frame #2: Victim vs. Victimizer

Another, more overtly biased narrative frame is “victim versus victimizer,” which holds that the former victim – Israel or the Jewish people – has now become the victimizer. It should not surprise us that this is the default position of an industry that has described its mission as “to afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted….”

Narrative Frame #3: All Negotiations Are Good, All Conflict Is Bad

Another narrative frame that journalists use is that negotiations are good and that conflict, or the threat of conflict, is bad. According to Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the mainstream media tend to be biased in favor of peace negotiations and against the party perceived as scuttling peace talks. In a report two years ago about Pakistan-India tensions, NPR’s Michael Sullivan commented approvingly of a “more reasonable attitude from both sides” toward entering into negotiations. His comment represented a subtle rebuke of the Indian foreign ministry spokesperson interviewed in the story, who demanded an end to cross-border terrorism as a precondition for negotiations.3

In addition to these common problems of narrative frames, certain aspects are specific to parts of the Australian media.

First, some of the outside sources imported into Australia, particularly from Britain, go so far as virtually to adopt the Palestinian narrative of the conflict. Traditionally, Australian journalists and media organizations have looked first and foremost to their British counterparts both for material and as models. British newspapers, however, unlike in postwar Australia or the United States, have long been marked by overt ideological agendas. In particular, the Australian press imports stories and commentaries from The Independent and The Guardian, both of which are more or less openly pro-Palestinian. As recently demonstrated by Trevor Asserson,4 the same holds true for the BBC, which is also utilized extensively in Australia.

In addition, some segments of the media have, through interaction and self-selection, developed a largely common worldview that includes axiomatic, strongly pro-Palestinian views. This is particularly the case among Australia’s public broadcasters, though in less extreme form than in the BBC.

Israel and the Australian Media

As in most of the world’s media, Israel receives disproportionate coverage in Australia given the subject’s limited relevance to most people’s daily lives. Moreover, the attention focuses almost entirely on the conflict with the Arabs. Israeli political and social news is generally reported in terms of its effects on that struggle and the prospects for its resolution. Nor does the media aphorism “If it bleeds it leads” suffice to explain the coverage, since other conflicts involving much more loss of life receive much less coverage.

This disproportionate focus typifies all parts of the electronic and print media, though the treatment of Israeli and Middle Eastern news differs in other ways as well.

Print Media

The Australian print media is dominated by two corporate players. All major cities except Perth have a daily newspaper associated with the News Ltd media company, whose principal shareholder and founder is Australian-born American businessman Rupert Murdoch. This group includes the nation’s largest-circulation dailies, the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph tabloids, published in Melbourne and Sydney, respectively. News Ltd also runs the important daily The Australian.

News Ltd’s major competition comes from the John Fairfax stable of newspapers, which includes the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne’s The Age, and a national financial daily, the Australian Financial Review.

Certain independent daily newspapers also play an important role in shaping the overall tone of media coverage, such as Perth’s West Australian and the Canberra Times. Although the latter, for example, has a modest weekday circulation of less than forty thousand,5 its influence is disproportionate because it is based in the nation’s capital. Its audience includes senior civil servants, politicians, the diplomatic community, and the federal parliamentary press gallery, which plays a major part in determining what stories are featured and how they are covered.

None of Australia’s major newspapers is explicitly political in the way many British papers are. All present themselves as independent, objective sources with a wide range of commentary and views. However, the editorial line of some of them, such as the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times, tilts to the left, and of others, such as The Australian or tabloids like the Herald Sun, to the right.

Most consistently anti-Israeli is the Canberra Times, both in terms of its editorial line and the opinion and analysis it publishes. It also frequently reprints slanted news and commentary from Britain’s Independent.

The two major Fairfax newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, are Australia’s leaders in reprinting material from The Guardian. This makes their treatment of Israel less fair. These papers also tap other British dailies with different outlooks, such as The Telegraph and The Times, as well as major American papers. Nevertheless, the strongest voice in their Middle East coverage, apart from their own reporters and analysts, is The Guardian.

As is true everywhere, news coverage in the different papers varies over time as personnel change. The current Fairfax correspondent in the Middle East, Irish journalist Ed O’Loughlin, frequently puts Palestinian interpretations of events as the leads to his stories, with a paragraph much further down including a statement from an Israeli spokesperson. He also often uses language or interprets the news in ways critical of Israeli policies. For instance, in 2003, he declared that the road-map peace plan was “widely seen as anathema to Sharon, the former champion of annexing the territories and expelling their Arab occupants,” despite the fact that Sharon’s government had backed the road map and Sharon himself had never called for forced removals.6 A few weeks later, O’Loughlin speculated in a news story that a missile attack on a Hamas leader meant Sharon’s “public change of heart was just an elaborate dummy that he sold to Bush.”7

An independent study of Age news coverage of Arab-Israeli issues over eight weeks in 2003 highlights other examples of unfair coverage by O’Loughlin, and other serious flaws in many stories.8

By contrast, O’Loughlin’s predecessor as Fairfax Middle East correspondent, Ross Dunn, was generally fair in presenting the views of both sides.

Television

There are five free-to-air television networks in Australia. The three commercial ones are Channels 7, 9, and 10. Each presents competent nightly news programs and some current affairs, but depends on overseas news services for international coverage. The partial exception is Channel 9, the highest-rating of the three, which does more of its own reporting both for news and current affairs shows. The latter include an Australian version of 60 Minutes and also Sunday, which is watched by the political classes, journalists, and other opinion leaders.

Most of this programming is balanced and professional, if strongly influenced by the international news services. However, Richard Carleton, the main foreign affairs reporter on 60 Minutes, is highly critical of Israeli policy and his periodic stories on the Middle East clearly reflect this viewpoint. For instance, following the death of Yasser Arafat, Carleton commented, “[Arafat] was a terrorist of course but that didn’t distinguish him. Some say Mandela was one too. Ariel Sharon is near a war criminal….[Arafat] gave hope to defeated and oppressed Palestinians.”9

However, the most influential television news source, though not the one with the largest audience, is the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Its news programming has a fairly large audience10 and is watched closely by the political and intellectual classes, and it also produces two daily, significant current affairs shows. It also offers a variety of other material in this area, much more than the commercial networks.

Allegations of bias about ABC’s Middle East coverage have often been raised and debated. During the 1991 Gulf War, Labor Party Prime Minister Bob Hawke criticized ABC for nearly exclusive reliance on “expert” commentators who strongly opposed using force against Saddam Hussein.11 Australian Jews have also complained of a culture of bias at ABC, documenting problems in the presentation of facts, use of language, and acts of commission and omission designed to reflect a politically-correct agenda.12

A recent book by Peter Manning, ABC’s former head of news and current affairs and now a university journalism lecturer, reflects the channel’s dominant, self-perpetuating views. In its first part, Dog Whistle Politics and Journalism attempts to prove Australian media racism against Arabs by using a computer search for the proximity of the words Arab and Islamic with words related to war and violence. Given that there has been a real concatenation of terror and violence with the Middle East in world affairs, it is not surprising that he found the combination was quite common. As for the book’s second part, it argues that the media did not sufficiently understand that Palestinian suicide bombings were a necessary and reasonable response to Israeli occupation.13

As Manning told ABC Radio National:

“Yes we have suicide bombers, but that’s one reality. Another reality is that since the 1967 war there’s been, whether it’s a Labour or a Likud government in Israel, there has been expansion of settlements into occupied Palestinian land. Now what do a people who are occupied do about that, and how do they have a space, how do they have a narrative in the Western media to represent their feelings about that, and their actions about that, and how is that reported, and does it in any sense balance the Israeli government narrative which is about terrorism and suicide bombers?”

So when for instance, since 2000, there was a Barak government policy which was taken up by the Sharon government, which was to assassinate Palestinian leaders one by one, and…do so quite indiscriminately, not “targeted assassinations” as the Israeli public relations machine would have you say, but quite messily, so that women and children and Palestinian children in schools are shot while they’re sitting with their schoolbooks.14

Another public television network, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), provides multicultural programming. It also offers news with an international focus, and considerable current affairs and documentary material, again with a worldwide emphasis. Although its ratings are generally low,15 its current events shows are watched by many politically active people.

Of the television networks, SBS has the most Middle East – and most consistently biased – coverage. This partiality appears to come both from the sources SBS uses – it relies more on BBC material for its overseas reporting than any other Australian news service – and from an apparent ambience of sympathy for the Palestinians as part of the network’s commitment to multiculturalism.

A study by the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council of daily SBS coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 2001 gives fifty-seven examples of bias in violation of SBS’s own editorial guidelines. It also summarizes SBS documentary programming on the Middle East over a ten-year period, and finds a preponderance of material highly critical of Israel. Moreover, one of the few exceptions, the BBC’s Israel: A Nation Is Born screened in 1996, was given an introductory warning that the program presented “a partisan view of this tumultuous era in history….It is unfortunate that the Arab view was not sought, to fill in the gaps.” None of the shows critical of Israel, including some from official Palestinian and Lebanese sources, prompted a similar disclaimer.16

Radio

ABC is also the dominant force in radio news and current affairs in Australia, though generally outrated by commercial talk radio. Radio news primarily depends on wire services, and the political, intellectual, and business elites generally tune in either to the local or national ABC stations. In recent months the former communications minister, Senator Richard Alston of the ruling Liberal Party, submitted sixty-six complaints about reporting on the Iraq War in a single ABC radio news program.17

Anti-Semitic Trends in the Australian Media

Anti-Israeli bias is common in Australia media; much rarer are instances of outright anti-Semitism. Most of the problems in the coverage of Israel do not involve racism but, instead, journalistic ignorance or sloppiness under time pressure, as well as narrative frames that are often amplified by material from overseas news services.

Certain media themes relating to Israel in Australia do, however, fall into the category of anti-Semitism. More specifically, they are examples of the “new anti-Semitism,” in which hatred and conspiracy theories about Israel and its supporters serve the same attitudinal functions as did beliefs about Jews for traditional anti-Semites. Five trends in the Australian media unequivocally violate one or more elements of Natan Sharansky’s “3-D” test for anti-Semitism:18 demonization, double standards, or delegitimation.

1. Jewish power, especially financial power, closes off debate about the Middle East in Australia.

This is the single most dangerously anti-Semitic theme now current in Australia. It was particularly prominent in late 2003, when there was a media debate over the decision by a committee associated with Sydney University to give the annual Sydney Peace Prize to Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi. All major bodies of the Jewish community protested that, given her hardline stances, Ashrawi was an inappropriate recipient, and some asked the premier of New South Wales to refrain from personally granting the award.

Prof. Stuart Rees, head of the selection committee, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that Jewish criticism of the award “raises issues central to the health of Australian democracy. Should people give way because of the formidable financial power pitted against them?”19 He also told a columnist, Alan Ramsey, that he was standing up to “invisible but powerful people” who “intimidate and bully.” Ramsey, a respected veteran commentator, himself complained about the “virulent campaign of distortion by Jewish critics” and said that to “buckle” to them would be “shameful.”20 Earlier Ramsey had backed a Labor opposition backbencher’s criticism of a pro-Israeli speech by Labor leader Simon Crean, saying: “So there you have it – money. Almost always, in politics, money is at the root of the greatest grovelling….The pro-Israeli lobby in this country is a powerful, influential and intimidating group. Backbenchers…get left way behind, along with the interests of the Palestinians.”21

Even more extreme was the editor of the Herald‘s online “Webdiary” discussion forum, Margo Kingston, who said that Jewish backers of Sharon “seem to have the power, money and clout to dominate public debate and wield enormous political and financial power behind the scenes.”22 Later she asserted that “the fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia.”23 When there were objections, Kingston replied that she was mystified, saying, “I am not anti-semitic, and I thought what I wrote was a statement of fact.”24

ABC programs at the time of the Ashrawi controversy made similar claims. Stephen Crittendon of ABC Radio’s Religion Report interviewed a Jewish leader and repeatedly charged that the opposition to Ashrawi was really “about bullying and intimidation” and might “release anti-Semitic views.”25 In a story about supposed Jewish “pressure” to “censor” an exhibit at a Sydney museum, the ABC Television program Lateline asserted that because of the Ashrawi dispute “the power of Australia’s Jewish lobby was at the centre of media attention.” However, the story included no examples of actual pressure.26

Other expressions of this theme, with its classical anti-Semitic resonance and implication that any disliked participation by Jewish organizations in public debate is illegitimate and dangerous, were common in 2003 and have occasionally reappeared in the Australian media.

2. Israel is a demonically evil or Nazi state and the source of most of the world’s problems.

Claims that Israel was uniquely evil or a Nazi state were not uncommon among extreme critics over the past decade, but increased drastically in the media after 11 September 2001. Some opponents of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq often put Israel at the center of Middle Eastern and world problems. This view fosters distorted portrayals of Israeli policies.

John Pilger, a highly regarded Australian expatriate journalist and filmmaker, wrote in reaction to the 11 September attack:

“The current threat of attacks in countries whose governments have close alliances with Washington is the latest stage in a long struggle against the empires of the west, their rapacious crusades and domination… the weak have learned how to attack the strong, and the western crusaders’ most recent colonial terrorism (as many as 55,000 Iraqis killed) exposes “us” to retaliation.”

The source of much of this danger is Israel. A creation, then guardian of the west’s empire in the Middle East, the Zionist state remains the cause of more regional grievance and sheer terror than all the Muslim states combined.27

The largest promulgator of such notions has been the Canberra Times, especially its editorial page. Over the past decade or so, at least two of the paper’s columnists have compared Israel to Nazi Germany.28 After 11 September, an editorial said the event might “give propaganda power” to Israeli attempts “to characterise Palestinian resistance as ‘terrorism.'”29 A few days later, foreign affairs correspondent Lincoln Wright averred that since 11 September “was directed by Islamic terrorists aggrieved by US support for Israel,” the best response would be if “the US pressured Israel to provide some justice to the Palestinians.”30 A few weeks later, an editorial stated: “The latest cycle arises from World War I, which spawned the vengeful Versailles, Nazism, the Holocaust, the creation of Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians. Horrible and inexcusable as it is, the September 11 attacks did not come without cause.”31

Subsequent editorials have similarly demonized Israeli behavior. In October 2003, when Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed told the Organization of the Islamic Conference that Jews control the world, the paper argued that if Mahathir had “said ‘Israeli’ rather than ‘Jewish’…some of his points were arguable” and “until Israel shows rather more good faith in addressing the causes of its problems, it can hardly be surprised about being misrepresented.”32

There are many other examples, such as SBS documentaries, of attributing demonic motives and inordinate influence to Israel.

3. U.S. policy is the result of Jewish neoconservatives.

Another anti-Semitic trend that has appeared in the Australian media involves conspiracy theories about American neoconservatives that portray them as either a wholly or uniquely Jewish phenomenon. It is of course not anti-Semitic to criticize either neoconservatives or their views – unless one means Jews, or claims they are serving Israel and not the United States. Unfortunately, charges of the latter type have been made in Australia.

A forty-five-minute story on the neoconservative phenomenon on ABC Television’s flagship investigative show 4 Corners, screened on 18 March 2003,33 repeatedly identified neoconservatives as Jewish or Zionist and said they have “tentacles” throughout U.S. power structures. Other ABC programming has made similar allegations, such as 7:30 Report on 1May 2003 in which the presenter asked a guest: “Will Bush accept a need to demonstrate not just to Palestinians, but also to the rest of the Middle East, that he’s not just being run by the Israeli lobby?”34

Similar exaggerated and racist claims about neoconservatives have appeared in the press, especially in material imported from British papers such as The Guardian.

4. Anti-Semitism results from Jewish activities and behavior, especially support for Israel.

Phillip Adams, a prominent ABC Radio presenter and newspaper columnist, said Jewish criticism of Ashrawi’s peace prize was “an attack on free speech in this country, and yes, free assembly.” This was a ridiculous assertion, but not anti-Semitic. But after declaring his support and closeness to the Jewish community, Adams went on to say that Jewish lobbying on this issue and others “plays right into the hands of the true anti-Semite.” As noted earlier, Stephen Crittendon of ABC made a similar assertion about Jewish advocacy and anti-Semitism, and there are other examples. It would be considered unacceptable to claim that, for instance, while violence and racism against African Americans is unfortunate, the views of most blacks and the policies supported by their leaders exacerbate the problem.

5. Classical anti-Semitic themes explain Jewish and Israeli behavior.

Some of the commentary on Israeli-Palestinian issues uses elements of classical anti-Semitism beyond the “Jews control the media” trope.

For example, in the 23 December 2004 edition of the Australian Financial Review, the academic David Wetherell, whose past work has concentrated on the history of Christianity in Australia and the Pacific islands, published an article called “Israel and the God of War.” In it he argued that Judaism and the Bible make Jews inherently prone to genocide and ethnic cleansing. Citing Deuteronomy, he claimed: “the narrative does require the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants.” He also quotes the author Gem de Ste Croix’s statement that: “I know of only one people which felt able to assert that it actually had a divine command to exterminate whole populations among those it conquered, namely, Israel.”

Wetherell adds a variety of pro-Palestinian arguments, including that Zionism was always essentially about ethnic cleansing. The article also draws on classical Christian anti-Semitic themes about how Jews are vengeful and unforgiving and believe their status as the “chosen people” entitles them to abuse non-Jews.35

Conclusion

The Australian media has a mixed record on Israel. Much of the coverage is developed from international wire services and shares their biases. In the electronic outlets, distortion also stems from entrenched cultures, especially at the public broadcasters ABC and SBS, as events are interpreted within frames such as “occupation,” “cycle of violence,” or “terrorism as the last resort of the desperate.”

In addition, themes have emerged that belong to the “new anti- Semitism.” These include the Jewish lobby’s supposed financial and media power; extreme demonization of Israel and allegations about the global effects of its policy toward the Palestinians; conspiracy theories about American Jewish neoconservatives; and a tendency to claim that anti-Semitism is a response to Jewish conduct and attitudes. These notions are not widespread, but neither are they marginal. They deserve serious scrutiny and an effort to combat them by both the Australian and international Jewish communities.

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Notes

1. The Project for Excellence in Journalism is “an initiative by journalists to clarify and raise the standards of American journalism,” according to its self-description. Part of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, its website is: http://www.journalism.org.

2. David Bernstein, Israel in the Media: A Guide to Producing Effective Media Critiques (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2004). The discussion of narrative frames begins on p. 13. Available at: http://www.ajc.org/InTheMedia/ PubIsrael.asp?did>1260.

3. Ibid., pp. 14, 15, 15-16.

4. See the various reports at www.bbcwwatch.com.

5. Figures for six months up to December 2004, as compiled by the Australian Audit Bureau of Circulation. See the website of John Fairfax Holding: http:// www.fxj.com.au/readershipcirc.htm.

6. The Age, 31 May 2003.

7. The Age, 14 June 2003.

8. Media Study Group, “An Analysis of Compliance with Journalistic Standards in The Age Newspaper’s News Stories on the Arab-Israel Conflict from June 15th 2003 to August 15th 2003,” available online at: www.honestreporting. com/articles/ 45884734/reports/-The-Age–Newspaper-Study-(pdf). asp. The study is a valuable source of examples of problematic coverage in The Age, and as a whole makes a strong case. However, it has some problems both in terms of the overly quantitative methodology used, and occasional unrealistic standards for media behavior rooted in a lack of detailed knowledge of the news business.

9. Channel 9, 60 Minutes, 14 November 2004.

10. Figures for the second week of March 2005 show that ABC receives 16.9 percent of total television viewing in Australia’s major cities from 6 p.m. to midnight. The ABC Nightly News, while well behind news broadcasts on commercial Channels 9 and 7, has a substantial viewership and the Sunday night edition is one of the fifty most watched shows on television for the week. See Oztam ratings figures, available at: http://www.pbl.com.au/media/ pdf/2005/Australian%20Television%20Ratings%20-%20Week%2011.pdf.

11. For a brief description of this controversy, see Michael Kapel, “Notebook,” Australia/Israel Review, 18 February 1998, http://www.aijac.org.au/review/ 1998/232/notebk232.html.

13. Peter Manning, Dog Whistle Politics and Journalism: Reporting Arabic and Muslim People in Sydney Newspapers (Sydney: University of Technology, Centre for Independent Journalism, 2004). See also an analysis of the book by Ted Lapkin, “Who Shall Judge: One Manning’s Terrorist…,” The Review, April 2004, http://www.aijac.org.au/review/2004/294/manning.html.

14. ABC Radio National, The Media Report, 4 March 2004. The transcript is available at: http://www.womenforpalestine.com/020403v2/media-interviews -DangerousLabels.htm.

15. In the second week of March 2005, 4.8 percent of television viewing in capital cities from 6 p.m. to midnight was of SBS. See Oztam ratings figures at: http:// www.pbl.com.au/media/pdf/2005/Australian%20Television%20 Ratings%20- %20Week%2011.pdf.

16. The AIJAC report is available at: http://www.aijac.org.au/resources/reports/ sbs-report.html#Documentaries.

17. For a recent discussion ofAustralian controversies about ABC bias, including the Alston complaints, see Gerard Henderson, “Devil in the Detail, but Now It’s Their job,” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 March 2005, http://smh.com.au/ news/Gerard-Henderson/Devil-in-the-detail-but-its-now-their-job/2005/03/ 07/1110160750162.html.

23. Ibid., 22 July 2004. The web address is: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/ 07/22/1090464787482.html, but the specific phrase has since been removed. It was, however, reproduced in a subsequent posting cited in the next endnote.

27. John Pilger, “The Unmentionable Source of Terrorism” Antiwar.com, 20 March 2004, http://antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid>2159. To the best of my knowledge, this particular article was not published in the mainstream Australian media.

28. Gerard Noonan, “Third Reich Echoes on the West Bank” Canberra Times, 24 March 1994; Robert Macklin, “Holocaust’s New Religion Adds Fire to Old Conflict,” Canberra Times, October 2000, cited in Jeremy Jones, “Leaping the Line,” The Review, November 2000.

35. David Wetherell, “Israel and the God of War,” Australian Financial Review, 23-28 December 2004.

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TZVI FLEISCHER has been editor of The Review, the monthly current affairs magazine of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), since 1999. He has served in various roles at AIJAC since 1992, and also writes a monthly media column for the Australian Jewish News. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in international politics at Monash University.

Tzvi Fleischer

Tzvi Fleischer has been editor of The Review, the monthly current affairs magazine of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), since 1999. He has served in various roles at AIJAC since 1992, and also writes a monthly media column for the Australian Jewish News. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in international politics at Monash University.